Slashdot Mirror
Alibaba Co-founder Says Many Americans 'Want To Stop China' From Upgrading Its Tech (cnbc.com)
With the threat of Trump's ever-looming trade war with China and his administration's sanctions on Chinese companies like ZTE, it's hard to remember a more contentious period between the two countries in recent times. Adding fuel to the conversation, an Alibaba co-founder alleged that many Americans want to stop China from upgrading its technology and from becoming more innovative. From a report: Chinese media outlets have repeatedly asserted that American complaints about the tech sector are really just efforts to slow the country's rise as a global power. "There's nothing wrong with a country wanting to upgrade its own manufacturing sector, go higher tech, be more innovative," Tsai said. "But then, from the Chinese perspective, what we're seeing is there are a lot of people in America that want to stop China from doing that." After three decades of producing low-end manufacturing goods, Tsai said, China recognizes the need to develop better technology, upgrade its manufacturing sector and focus more on value-added areas like robotics, aeronautics and high-tech medical equipment.
So our only recourse is to try to stop other countries from innovating! No way can we allow someone a chance at bettering themselves if we're not able to steal the betterment for our own use.
American companies prefer to not have their IP stolen by foreign companies. Also, don't start with something as silly and foolish as: "it's hard to remember a more contentious period between the two countries in recent times". Really? Is it that hard to remember more contentious countries? Let me get you started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
China will develope something new; but until then its business as usual.
it's hard to remember a more contentious period between the two countries in recent times.
Well, Saudi Arabia is bombing the crap out of Yemen. Russia has been covertly sending troops into Ukraine. Israel and Iran are almost at war.
So yeah, one country increasing tariffs on another is probably the most contentious thing going on right now.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Who doesn't want their greatest rival to be struggling?
While I want to watch China suffer another two centuries of "shame" (which most working poor Chinese don't even care about), America needs a worthy rival.
Otherwise, this country stagnates which is what has happened since the Soviet Union went belly up in 1991. Another cold war won't hurt anyone and would probably start another space race. All good things in my eyes.
Innovate away ON YOUR OWN China, just don't expect to get the free USA ride you've been getting this entire time to keep going.
Basically he's denying China cheats like the wind. To be fair, when USA industry was young, we played intellectual property games with Europe also.
But when you become a trading super-power, your scrappy "street-smarts" 3rd-world tendencies need to be corrected or you will face retaliation. You can no longer fly under the radar. China has yet to kick its bad habits.
Table-ized A.I.
Maybe they just want to stop having tech stolen and show up in Chinese products that largely look like clones of the stolen products that are in turn then sold back to the foreign markets at much lower cost. There is no way any american laws or tariffs would prevent or even could prevent China from having its own ideas, creating new product categories, and then selling them to other countries that would feel safe using them
We created tomato sauce.
I fail to see the connection between the Americans deciding they don't want to import some stuff, or import less of it, and the Chinese upgrading or not upgrading their own country's stuff. What prevents them from doing so?
Ezekiel 23:20
China continues to require that nearly all companies that operate in CHina to have 51% chinese ownership (though cars are now exempted, though they will still pay high tariffs). Likewise, the companies will be required to turn over IP to Chinese owners.
And yet, this is America's fault for a western company wanting to keep their IP, while Chinese companies will sue for theft of their IP.
Yeah, totally makes sense.
Now, if Trump would just do his GD job or at least keep a few of his promises esp for dealing with CHina.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This. We will use trade as leverage to control China's attempts to basically annex the entire region. The south china sea being a prime example. That and the trade imbalance itself is our motivation.
that is not accurate.
Yes, China steals a great deal. BUT, that does not mean that CHina's innovation is not up and coming. It is a horrible mistake to claim otherwise.
Just like Japan and India today, you have many ppl in CHina that are learning and are as innovative as any others.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Countries like to have allies. They are obligated to defend those allies. It isn't always altruistic but many times it can be. Setting aside fluffy feelings though there is plenty of motivation for us to want to defend our allies in the region from a country that is at best a "competitor" to us on the global stage.
ZTE broke an International embargo and then blatantly lied about implementing the remedies it had agreed to. There is a general unease with China's grown economic and military power but ZTE's case had absolutely nothing to do with any of that. Chinese companies need to learn that being cozy with the Chinese Communist party can't protect them in the world stage
We do the R&D on new ideas, they use espionage (been going on for decades) to steal it and then "upgrade" their systems, to compete back with us.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
China continues to require that nearly all companies that operate in CHina to have 51% chinese ownership
And why is that so? Hm? Any idea? Most (all?) asian countries have laws like that. And: why is tat wo? Hm? Any idea?
A country that got fucked over by outside forces over a course of 300 - 400 years makes a law that all companies inside needs to be minimum 51% owned by its citizens. Wow, and you somehow think that makes no sense? Because after the tea party your country never got fucked over? Perhaps you should for funk sake start reading some history books?
If I was "King of Germany" every non European company would most certainly be 51% owned by Europeans. And if I was "King of the EU" I would establish that in the whole EU, to get you -fuckers- out!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Moving the goal posts back a couple hundred years? Yeah... I see what you did there.
With the amount of flip-flopping Trump does, I am sure he keeps 50% of his promisses.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It is more like, we want open and fair competition. China is basically stealing the workings of a modern economy through underhanded tactics (like currency manipulation, lack of enforcement of IP laws, lax environmental policies and regulations, lax labor rules and regulations). This will result in a world where innovation is stunted.
1. If an inventor can not profit from his invention, he has less incentive to invent it in the first place. That is why governments support patents and intellectual property. Why write the next killer app if another company can just clone it with no recourse?
America here is the inventor, and our IP is ripped off, yielding lower sales, lower return on investment, lower incentive to innovate.
2. When it comes to online technology, China uses the guise of social control (which is bad as it is), to block US companies from operating in China. They block Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc.. etc... etc...
They do this in reality to give their home-grown apps a chance to take root and operate. China didn't innovate when it created Weibo. They saw what we were doing and cloned it. They are masters as cloning. US companies do the same thing too, just look at how many Zynga games were ripped off. But in the US, you can take them to court. In China, best of luck.
3. China then manipulates its currency exchange rates to give it export advantage. If it costs a company $100 US to export a widget from China, but $120 to export the same widget from Japan, because of the difference between the Yen and the Yuan exchange rates, you are going to choose China as the source for your next supplier.
They then give themselves competitive advantages for home-grown consumption because there are import duties and tariffs to acquiring foreign made goods. So while your steel mill has to compete with currency-controlled steel rates from China, it can not lower its prices to win the domestic Chinese market, because the government will just tariff you out of the market anyway. They use this to shore up their domestic suppliers.
Americans at the end of the day want a fair and free market to compete in. But they are hindered by their own government. If you want to make bluejeans, and a seamstress in China costs you $5/hour to employ, but a seamstress in the US costs you $15 due to minimum wage laws, you have to fire the seamstress and ship your manufacturing to China to compete with their domestic producers. Even if the US seamstress will accept the $5 rate, our governments force her to be uncompetitive, despite her own objections. It's the same state with construction costs, environmental compliance, and ancillary costs like buying software. A company with a high employee count has to pay for professional versions of MS Office, Windows, database software, application software, support tools, etc...
I did work for a Chinese manufacturer entering the US market, and when the Chinese employees came here and needed tech help on their laptops to connect to displays and networks, it was crazy how much cracked software there was. In China, you can get away with it. Here, the BSA would sue the company to the ground.
Note: I did not really dig into industrial espionage, which is rampant. Nor I did not dig into contract manufacturers learning the build process, and competing with their own customers, which also happens (see Dell). I also haven't dug into knock-off production. Any factory in the US making knock-off Louis Vuitton bags would get sued into the ground. In China, they are allowed to flourish. We abide by the treaties and trade practices we agree to. They do not. There is a culture of there of "by hook or by crook". Basically, fish, or steal someone else's fish. It doesn't matter how you get the fish.
That's mostly military tech. Everyone expects and does military espionage.
But China plays games on the commercial side. It would be like the US Federal Gov't breaking into Chinese OS companies and giving the trade secrets to Microsoft, or creating red-tape for foreign competitors to MS that MS itself doesn't have.
Table-ized A.I.
You're right, I missed the article "the" Now take a pill and relax, 'cause it doesn't mean I'm not right. Something similar happened seventeen years ago, which isn't that long a time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
First of all, American companies don't have much of a problem with China as evidenced by the shortage of complaints they file against Chinese companies (with the exception of piracy - but that is a different kind of IP than is being discussed here), i.e. it is a patent or trade secret).
Secondly, the idea of imaginary property is a very dubious one, and one that is designed by the newly powerful thieves to not give back what they stole in the first place. Here are some examples:
Most of the fruit you eat originated in Asia. Peaches, apples, pomegranates, etc all originated in China or central Asia. Those farmers spent generations selectively breading them and improving the genome. Now comes Monstanto or some other American biofarm company and says, hey you cannot keep the seed of the harvest you planted because I worked on improving it. How very convinient!
The same goes for many livestock. Guess where the Arabian horses originate from? Should the midle easterns be getting a share of the loot Europeans stole from the Americas as they used their horses? Same goes for much of the foundation of western knowledge. For example, if Copernicus was to publish his paper today, he would have been nailed to the walls for plagiarizing Muslim texts down the diagrams and formulas. I can bring up similar example in medicine for Ayurvedic practices to Avecina's texts there were taught in Europe until not too long ago. Should these nations now sue NASA and other western companies because their IP was used for space exploration and in other devices?
And the US itself was a perpetraitor of so much intellectual property. If you were to go only a little over a 100 years back you will see all the complaints that UK and Europe were filing against Americans outright break of copyright and IP theft.
I know what you are going to say...these text and trees and so on were done long time ago and their IP has expired. But who decides when the IP expires? As far as I can tell it is the holding nation. The US and EU routinely extend copyright and patent life well beyond the original timeframe (and original intent, I must add). So why can't China or Iran or Iraq declare an IP life of 400 years?
It must be so convenient for the US that having taken IP of generations of Asian farmers and scientists to not allow anyone else to do the same. Or that after having translated and used whatever Chinese, Indian, or Arabic scientific texts they could get their hands on, suddenly declaring that it is bad to copy works of others without paying off...a pay off by the way that keeps being a moving target and is unilaterally set.
You should read up a bit on your history before getting on your high horse.
Actually American's are too self absorbed to give a shit except when China literally steals American developed technology or cheats in the market with the help of their government. Not to say the US is pure in that regard either but if China could be bothered to just reasonably fair it would be fine for everyone but the most xenophobic among us.
Many Americans whine about jobs moving to China but they moved there because they pay their workers a lot less on average. If we were willing to work for Chinese wages then those labor intensive jobs could stay here. I don't think that's really what Americans actually want when they really think about it. That's why every time you hear a politician (falsely) promising to "bring back manufacturing jobs" they are so full of shit their eyes are probably brown. The only way that happens is if American accept a huge reduction in wages. There are lots of manufacturing jobs still here but you need more than just a high school diploma for a lot of them.
And American employees want to stop seeing their jobs shipped overseas.
They can do this any time they want. They just have to accept the same wages as their overseas competitors. It's a hard reality but US wages are among the highest in the world. If you want to compete on price you have to have lower costs than the other guy.
Yeah, disregarding trump, how exactly has America harmed Europe? Even now, Europe owns a number of American based companies, and vs. versa.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Moving the goal posts back a couple hundred years? Yeah... I see what you did there.
I'm not exactly sure what you are saying here. Are you saying developing countries now should be held to a different standard than countries whose economies were in a similar state 200 years ago? If so, do you believe that only because it's different when you do it or do you have a reasonable reason to feel this way?
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
...the US DISREGARDED AND DIDN'T GIVE A SHIT about European patents or Copyrights.
Oh, we certainly regarded them: feel free to shut your mouth for a bit and learn a little.
Or want to be able to live without the fear of nukes, since Kim Jung Un is using Chinese GPS....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If you mean electric vehicle with EV, then no. america is decades behind Europe.
What color is the sky on your planet? You certainly aren't basing that claim on any facts (nor did you provide any) so one has to presume you are talking about a different America and a different Europe than the one here on Earth.
Tesla made a new and better battery and manages to sell a nice set of cars ... but in the vehicle itself is nothing really innovative.+
Spare me your attempt to seem unimpressed. "Nothing really innovative"? You might have an argument if anyone else was making more innovative vehicles. Nobody has moved the auto industry more towards electrification than Tesla and to claim their cars aren't innovative is preposterous even if you don't like them.
We just need to steal the technology back from them
Considering the "quality" of most of their goods, not to mention that of their "research papers," I'm not sure we want it.
I would hope so. I would hope we as a globally connect species who have shrunk the world down to meer days have different standards than our ancestors.
Some of the crap we can even agree on: no torture, no inhumane weapons, no slavery, no killing of babies, no raping, no nuclear waste dumping, etc.
While I wasn't explicit, I thought it was clear I meant acting the same from an economic standpoint. It is stretch for you to bring up slavery and torture and insinuate I would support developing countries today committing those acts.
Intellectual property rights and slavery are very different things and I'm not sure why you are creating some kind of equivalency between them.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
1) Yeah, America keeps starting all those wars in the middle east. Lets see. We are responsible for invasion of Iraq. That is true.
However, it was Europe that pushed the invasion of Libya, which is where most of the european refugees come from.
From that, ISIS came about, and then Europe pushed America to solve that issue.
Basically, the ONLY 2 that America deserves responsibility for is Iraq and Afghanistan. And Afghanistan invaded America first.
2) USA leads all nations in reducing carbon emissions. And there are a bunch more articles on it.
The pretty little graphs show that only in recent years has Europe not been equal or exceeded America. And what was really missing from that, is recent time, when EU has flatlined on their emissions, while America continues to drop.
And 2-3 x EU's emssions? Not even close.
3) yeah, that copyright shit really pisses me off. Sorry about that. However, it is not just American businesses pushing that. It is also European.
It's the blatant stealing you've done to me four times now with successive LED designs I've asked various companies to manufacture for me, only for them to turn around and sell my fucking units to a competitor.
And this is why all my primary manufacturing gets done here in the USA, by my own hand. Fuck you assholes, you just supply raw components to me. No more asking you to build advanced things for me when you steal it.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Now there are innovative and competitive chinese products out there. Trump just likes stroking the "Were number 1" jingoism among the old timers some more.
Your not number 1 unless you earn it and keep earning it.
According to someone I know who lived in China for a few years and visits frequently (his mother-in-law is a Chinese citizen), we don't have to worry about China out-innovating us. Their culture is too much about staying in line with the group-think and out of trouble with authorities and not individualistic enough for the risk-taking type of innovation that happens in the US and other developed, democratic countries.
Even if true, this, of course, could change in the future.
Though they have 5 times as many people who work for lower wages.
If by "stealing" you mean American CEOs tripping over themselves to move all manufacturing to China...
Actually, the biggest bully is the USA.
How many overseas military bases does China have, yep ZERO.
The US has a long history with interfering in other countries politics and they have ZERO respect for any democratically elected government if they make policies that don't suit the USA.
The USA also uses trade as a weapon to enforce the protection of Mickey Mouse etc.
And during WWII, the USA would only accept payment for weapons and aid in Gold.
For centuries the "gold standard" and the "British Pound" were the defect standard currencies for trade. Because the UK gold reserves were stripped from them by the USA the pound was conferred no longer to have the backing of the gold held in treasuries, so to get international trade the US$ became the standard because they now had the most gold.
Unless one is under threats, each party involved in any deal can make any demand and the other parties can walk away if he doesn't like it. If these American companies don't like transferring IPs, then they can walk away. Just like a Chinese company should not deal with the US if it doesn't want to obey the (questionably erected) Iran sanction. (In practice, most companies may transfer some assembling IP over to the Chinese entities while retaining the most valuable components/tech; which is why much of the Chinese surplus in manufacturing are actually just transferring costs of components they purchased from abroad. Chinese usually just do the last step of assembling. There is likely little IP forced to be transferred.)
Then you all know that how silly the US patent system has become. US companies have become patent trolls filing massive number of garbage patents over the year. How would a newcomer such as China can ever have a fair competing ground in such a skewed IP ecosystem? Why don't people in tech complain about the US patent system in other context but never when it involves China?
You gave a 4 year old reddit link that says America is #19 for scientific papers per population. Or even further behind in GDP / paper at #31
How many overseas military bases does China have, yep ZERO.
Actually, they have a naval base in Djibouti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Enigma
The USA let China do that as part of the cold war.
China opened up to the USA and then China moved away from the Soviet Union.
For that deal a lot of US tech had given to Communist China.
The US could enjoy low cost production lines in China bu the tech had to be given to China.
Generations of advanced US innovation was lost to China for some 1970's politics.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
So the USA has to keep offering China its tech for free in 2018 for some "300 - 400 years" reading of history?
When does this constant need for reparations from the USA to Communist China stop?
When is the USA finally able trade with China as an equal?
The USA is not the UK when "reading some history books... about China.
The US can set any trade policy it wants in 2018 with its tech.
China can invite in experts and try and extract tech from the advanced West.
Start making tech in China with its own domestic experts.
The US does not have to "give" China tech advances for free every decade.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Fuck off Windy. You have never shown a single lie.
You are still just claiming random idiots (maybe it's you all along) are me and are lying.
Show at least a little honour if you are going to have that sig...
So the USA has to keep offering China its tech for free in 2018 for some "300 - 400 years" reading of history? ... why do you think that? Who implied that?
No it has not
When is the USA finally able trade with China as an equal? What stupid meme is that? You buy stuff from China you sell stuff to them. Thats all.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
What did the CIA and FBI doing to protect US tech getting moved to China every decade since the 1970's?
The CIA and FBI protected US interests from the EU, Soviet Union, many other nations industrial spies.
China sent its expert over and the USA gave away its secrets for free. No FBI, no CIA to stop China.
Who stopped protecting US industrial and military secrets and allowed China to take what it wanted from the USA?
Who is now helping China extract the emerging tech from top US innovators?
Who allowed such a massive transfer of US secrets out of the USA direct to China for decades?
China got past so many elected US officials that always said they would protect the USA from all Communist spying....
Why did China get so much US tech for decades? Every other advanced nation that was good friends with the USA faced export restrictions on very advanced US technology.
Other 5 eye nations got nothing and they stayed loyal to the USA.
China supported Communists wars against the USA all over the world and got granted special US trade deals?
Yet China was given free and total access to top US experts and the best US universities for decades?
That China in 2018 still demands the USA just keep on giving its technology away to China for free as it did in the past?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Re "by outside forces over a course of 300 - 400 years makes a law that all companies inside needs to be minimum 51% owned by its citizens."
Why is USA tech in 2018 and US trade policy in 2018 in some way connected to what happened to China 300 years ago?
The USA does not have to give its advanced tech to China due to "reading some history books".
Why should a US company have to enter into an unfair trade agreement with a company in China and transfer its tech to China in 2018?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Thank you for the correction, I was indeed wrong. However compared to the USAs military influence chinas is very small.
Last week, in an interview with Fox News, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt claimed: "We are leading the nation — excuse me — the world with respect to our CO2 footprint in reductions."
The Washington Post fact-checked this claim and rated it "Three Pinocchios," which means they rate the claim mostly false. They further wrote that Pruitt's usage of data appeared to be a "deliberate effort to mislead the public."
Here's a picture if your own links words aren't enough for you to see it.
Why should a US company have to enter into an unfair trade agreement with a company in China and transfer its tech to China in 2018?
If you would find the trade agreement unfair, you would not sign the contract, or would you?
No idea what point you want to make.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
But they generally didn't give their best tech. And if they did, they did it with the full knowledge of what would happen with it. They simply saw all those potential consumers, and those low wages and wanted a shot at the money.
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" --Isaac Newton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
It would be difficult to sneak such non-military spying into the US budget without budget hawks taking notice. Since China's system is closed and has very few actual checks-and-balances, they can do that without it showing up in the open.
Now it may be possible for the US military to disguise non-military spying as military-related, but doing it heavily or for long periods is fairly likely to eventually be exposed. If your budget is for X but you keep doing Y instead, you are committing fraud by US law and at least some political entities will make it a public issue. Political competition is (usually) a good thing.
Table-ized A.I.